Friday, November 8, 2013

Geraldine Mitchell’s second collection, Of Birds and Bones, will be launched on Saturday 16 November, as part of Westport’s quirky annual literary event, the Rolling Sun Book Festival (www.rollingsunbookfestival.com).

Geraldine’s first collection, World Without Maps, was described in The Irish Times as “a cartography of psychological landscapes”, so it is fitting that American poet and psychogeographer Justin Hopper, presently based in London, should be the person chosen to launch this new book.

The event will take place at 5pm in The Cobbler’s Bar (Wyatt Hotel, The Octagon) to the strains of Polish musician Lukas Szczerbak on accordion – a suitably international roll call for Geraldine who has lived in France, Spain and North Africa and whose work often revisits foreign places even though she has now settled in her adoptive county, Mayo.

The book addresses various states of in-betweenness as the poet transitions through life, from single woman through to wife and mother. Echoing its title, there is a sense of the animal and the divine as some of the poems grapple with the corporeality of pregnancy and motherhood, and the illumination that maternal love brings. Wit flows through the volume, infusing humour amid the poet’s reflections on her new circumstances.

The book is for sale, as are all Arlen House titles, from Kenny's Bookshop, Galway.